Creating Your Own Rules: Money Expert's Way to Riches

Welcome back to the Alchemist Library podcast. Today on the show we have Garrett Gunderson. Garrett is a financial expert who has written multiple best-selling books. Garrett's work is quite right, wide ranging, and he takes a very holistic approach to finances. So I think you guys are going to be very Fascinated by this episode and I'm going to leave it at that and catch you guys inside. Peace you, garrett Gunderson. Thank you so much for being here today. So so, brian, how you doing, man? I want to start with what was one concept, one idea, something that's had the biggest, biggest tangible impact on your life.

You know, what really has like is writing, like just doing a lot of writing, like I Do. I write a blog every week now and it's like like the one I did today Was only like 1800 words. Most of them are like 2500 to 3000 words and it helps me like really learn the lessons because I think all the way through it. And so some mornings, like if I wake up but I'm not just feeling like a hundred percent or like something's on my mind and Bother me, I'll just take time to like write for myself, just like write about it and what the emotions are, and it helps me like process it and learn from it. So just that whole concept of writing has been so instrumental in like growing.

Yeah, that clarity of thought that comes with just writing ideas in our head. It's so funny how, like we think we have this clear idea when it's just In our brain, but then when you put it on paper you realize like it's such a more incomplete thought as so many more Holes than you initially thought. Like it's so beneficial to just sit down and Really write through things.

That's also like helpful when I'm on stage.

Just my recall my ability to articulate a concept, my ability to make something more simple that might have started out complex by just writing right, yeah, I noticed that today I was relisting to your episode with Ben Greenfield and I was just so like, when it comes to Money in particular, and accounting and tax stuff, all this world it gets so complicated so quickly and I was so impressed by just the ability to Explain these ideas and just like a compact, understandable, digestible way was. It was impressive.

Thanks, man.

Yeah, I appreciate that so if which book do you think that so my audience sense to be younger people in their 20s? What do you think of your work? What is the one book that you think that demographic should particularly have a their hands on?

I think my like newest book, money unmasked Because it's like helpful to understand your money persona and it's helpful to understand like how can you profit from your ideas up front without having to borrow money and Leverage the cycle of creation is really helpful, like it's just it's written in a more interesting way than some of my other books that feel a little bit more academic and so, like killing sacred cows is a book that if someone's never lost money or invested, they're only gonna get half of the value of that book. But if you, even if you've never invested money or you just started because you're young, like money unmasked is gonna be super helpful and doesn't require you to already have a certain amount of experience.

I'm curious about those four money personas that you talk about. It's interesting trying to piece that out for yourself, where you fit there and also just that understanding of that Additional awareness into how you traditionally are as a spender or as a saver.

It's a it's a fascinating topic to see how we relate to the world and that way and then, like the money personas are kind of these unconscious belief systems that often happen from the time we're young, through experience, through you know Circumstance, through environment, through how our family operates, and whether we choose to operate like them or do everything to operate different than them, through our concerns and frustrations. There's like all these different factors that start to develop how we operate around money and often it's a blind spot for people. They just have certain belief systems and they don't know where they come from and they often get into scarcity and isolation To deal with them, which can actually prolong the problem. But if you understand your money persona, you realize there's a shadow side, that's kind of that isolated side and that scarcity side, and there's also a winning persona which is more about co-creation, collaboration, more about value and service and solving problems and expansion. But if you don't understand what the trappings are or the triggers, it's easy to get caught in the shadow persona versus embrace that winning persona. And so you know, when I didn't really know what my money persona was like, I grew up a miser. That's, you know, the shadow persona, because I just learned for my family hey, you never know if you're gonna have enough money, you've got to hold on everything you've got, every way you could do to save. It's gonna be money in your pocket. You know, penny saved as a penny earned type of philosophy and that's what I was trained. That's why I was taught, that's what I was educated on, and there's Winning side of that, which is the mindful manager.

Like I've had people that take their skill sets. There's this one person, when I was doing interviews while I was writing the book that they would go in to like big casinos and they would show them where they were inefficient with their money, based upon how they ran everything, and their average savings for that company was like 800 grand, so it was substantial. But if all their energy was on how they could budget Themselves and not take that value somewhere else. They have a very finite, you know, income that's coming in versus some of this and and what they do is by adding more value to these other places they end up making more themselves. And so there's another guy that became my client back in 2005 and he was an engineer and and he was really like All about. He was such a miser, like he never spent any money. I read about him in the book like like even during Christmas, it was all like just spending a dollar per kid, goodwill, like it was just. Everything was about reduction and scrimping and sacrificing and it was suffocating, like didn't go on vacations.

He has this thing he talks about where he ate peanut butter and Miracle Whip sandwiches. I'm like why Miracle Whip? Because because jam was a luxury, right. Because they get a big tub of Miracle Whip at Costco. There was a lot less expensive than jam, so they get it.

Would go further, even though it didn't taste good, and so so ultimately he Figured out like wait, there's a process called cash flow optimization that he discovered because of the way his brain worked, and he started bringing that To me and showing me that so I could take to my clients. And now you know, he saved, like right now, every single month there's tens of millions of dollars attributed to that process that he's brought to the world. And now that he's operating His mindful manager way, he's made ten times more than it was an engineer on a fixed income. And he's taken vacations. Actually, unfortunately, he took a vacation to Israel and the second day he was there is when the whole war broke out.

So you know, but ultimately he's just a different person because his mindset is on value creation, on service solving problems, not just on what he can transaction you do to budget reduce and coupon clip and all this kind of stuff. It's very myopic, so that's uh, you know. That's the benefit of understanding your money persona is. It's not that they're Positive or negative, it's that there's a shadow in a winning side. So if it's like, oh, I'm a miser, that's negative, well, that's just your shadow persona. But the winning side of that is your detail oriented, you're efficient, you're great at improving things. You're gonna be able to find ways to reduce waste and create that efficiency right. So, like, as we embrace that, then all of a sudden we can celebrate it and we can actually make more money by Creating more value in the marketplace.

Hmm, and so much of that relates to, like, this abundance mindset, the scarcity mindset, how we relate to those two. What have you learned about, about those two opposing sides? It's an interesting conversation. I've been trying to Think through it because I have a friend who is a content creator, was an engineer, quit his engineering job after like six months and he went all in on content creation, moved to, moved to like Southeast Asia and was doing this, this and that and living a life, trying to live a life out of abundance, like a very acute awareness of this scarcity mindset that he was programming and trying to overwrite it. But because he was a content creator and because he was still in like the early stages of it, that income coming in was infrequent, infrequent and, um, like, to me it seemed crazy because the money, uh, wasn't there at the time to be able to do all these things. Um, so I I've been trying to pierce through how you can relate properly to that abundance mindset without going into Too far of the extreme, if that makes sense to you.

Yeah, like we've got to be mindful. But you know, there's a certain level of providing the basics in order to be able to live, and there are a lot of stories of reckless entrepreneurs that you know that are the one in the thousand that make it that we're living on someone's couch and risking everything and like there's a lot of gambling to that. Well, we don't hear a lot of times is the stories of the people who didn't make it. So I think it's important to be stewards over what we have and say I have a friend, rich christiansen wrote about zigzag principle. He's like, hey, you can have this amazing vision, but you zigzag your way there. And the first zig is create cash flow. So if that means that you have to have a temporary job in order to create enough cash flow to support what you're up to, so that you're not inviting so much scarcity because you're going deep into debt and not having an income come in, and that's just being wise. Now, on the other hand, if it's always, one day I'm going to start doing that and I'm just going to keep working and I got to build up enough, and then all of a sudden, just years and years go by and we miss that boat. So there's a sweet spot where you figure out like where can you dedicate and allocate your time so that you're taking care of the basics and finding time to create what you want to create. So I get it, because I sold my company a couple of years ago and I tried to just like okay, whenever money came from that. I'm not wanting to live off of that. So I got a chance to fill what it was like to kind of start over a little bit Sold my database, all that kind of stuff. Now I had certain assets like YouTube and stuff. But all of a sudden I start to feel what it's like if I want to just write but it's going to take a year for that to come out in a book, versus do a consulting gig or something like that. So I get that.

There's kind of like a you got to figure out what your flow is. You've got to carve out certain time so that you kind of earn that space, so that you know, like I know that some people can make it earning nothing for long periods of time and then it explodes. But I don't like that startup mentality. You know there's a lot of people that they do a startup company. They're sleeping on the floor, they're neglecting their health and they're just hoping to sell it one day. I'm more of a why not create cash flow along the way, responsibly and then, sure, reinvest some of that and potentially grow that. But a lot of these people want hyper growth, so they want to go from zero to exponential far too fast.

So it's about designing your rules, designing the game worth playing, taking care of the basics, and part of taking care of the basics might mean that you don't have an extravagant lifestyle. You don't have everything that you want, but you're doing the work that you want. You're doing the things that matter to you. So what is that allocation? Is it 50-50? You know you, just you do some of those things.

I love the intentionality behind the lifestyle design, because there's so few people that actually just sit down and say, like, what do I want to want in life? It's such a good guiding principle once you have that patterned out and be like okay, this is what I want, this is what I'm aiming towards. It provides such a better way of interacting with the world today because you know the direction you want to head in.

Right Most people. It kind of becomes a default. I mean, especially in today's world where people are going to school getting a student loan coming out, not doing what they went to school for or not getting what the school promised them they would get, as far as an income. So now they have this feeling of like I'm already starting below zero because I've got this loan that I have to pay and so they would get a job and something they don't love to do, they don't want to do, hoping that it'll be temporary, and then all of a sudden, time slips away. So when we trade our time for money and we're not intentional about the life that we want, we go to that default. That gets sucked into hourly. That gets sucked into oh, this has a good wage and benefits. And the problem is, if we're doing it for that stability and security at the expense of expression and freedom, then we're going to end up unhappy.

We're going to end up with an energy drain. We're going to end up in a place where we don't have the same zeal for life and that passion starts to diminish. And then we do what we have to do instead of what we get to do, and I think it takes a lot of energy, effort and intention to discover the life that we want to live and to design it that way, because the dream job might not exist. Maybe you have to be entrepreneurial and invent something.

I think there's far too much time dedicated to memorizing and passing tests and not enough time dedicated to discovery of ourselves. So everything from emotional intelligence to financial intelligence, to the savvy of proper communication skills, sales, marketing, fulfillment these are the things that aren't often taught in a classroom, but they're taught in the classroom of life. But if we don't learn them because we're doing things that we hate, when we finish doing the thing we hate in the name of paycheck, we don't have the same energy when that day is over, because we're exhausted, because we gave too much of ourselves in sacrifice, and I think this is one of the notions that's problematic in the world is people think we have to sacrifice to succeed, but sacrifice often is the very thing that impedes our progress and decimates our success. Because what if you do something that you hate and it pays you? Okay, you're like, are you more successful? I don't know, how did you feel about the process to get there? I?

don't believe the ends justify the means. I think the means are where we win is if we choose the means that are meaningful to us and the win is in the work and we enjoy the process along the way. It doesn't mean that we're just going to get to do everything we want all the time. We're going to do things that are difficult, that we have to discover, that we eventually have to be proper enough to delegate and there is a path that gets us there. But I look at that as like all the ingredients to figure out what we want to do and what we don't want to do, all the ingredients to discover like yeah, I'm not going to do that in the future, but this is what really lights me up. But most people, unfortunately, as time goes on, become bitter and stop looking for that.

They think it's too far out of breach, they don't think it's possible, they go. Oh well, I have a spouse now. I got to earn money. I've got kids, I got to take care of them. They got to go and like so, a lot of people, especially in earlier generations, lived their life for someone else. They did these jobs for the pensions and the benefits and guess what? A lot of those pensions went bankrupt, a lot of those benefits got cut over time. So here they are, losing the skills that matter most because they're trapped in a job they don't love instead of investing in themselves, growing their value, understanding how to serve others and solve problems. And this is where we are stuck today.

I mean, I think that there's a lot of people that are willing to do things that don't make sense in the name of a paycheck. As a matter of fact, a lot of people turn a blind eye to the impact of what they do, that it's maybe not the best thing, but it's necessary for them, in their mind, to earn money. So, like, just think about all the crazy things that go on in this world and you're like who are the people that are executing this? Who are the people that are doing that work, people that feel it's their only option or feel like it's too, that's too, and they just don't even try to discover. You know what's actually happening, and I mean, that's probably a bigger conversation, but it's one of the issues that, I think, is why we're not in a better place right now.

Yeah, I mean, it's so fascinating. It reminds me of that quote from Jim Carrey talking about how his dad could have been a great stand-up comedian. But he wanted to, but he thought that the safe route was to become an accountant. And then he became an accountant and, yeah, fired as an accountant. And then the quote from Jim Carrey is something along the lines of you could fail living someone else's life, so might as well fail trying to live your own life. It's perfect. It beautifully illustrates that point of like. Yeah, there's just, we gotta get intentional about what we want.

When the younger generation like you know, jim Carrey's father was in a generation which was more likely to get that job that's like oh, if I go get this job, it gives benefits and retirement plan and they were more likely to believe that because, you know, 50 years ago people were like, oh, if you work hard and get good grades and get a degree, you're set.

But now we've seen that that's not quite how it works. There's so many companies going don't really care whether you have a degree or not. I care whether your abilities are and whether you can provide value. So that narrative has massively changed. So hopefully people are more willing to take a leap of faith on themselves. But there's also kind of a notion that's growing where people feel because it is easier in at least in America today to make a living than it was 50 years ago. Technology's advanced, you know. There's just so much more available and accessible. If you look at the wealth of today versus the wealth of 50 years ago, it's been exponential, right, even though there's inflation, even though it costs a lot more. But people are earning so much more and they're able to accomplish so much more because of we're building on other people's ideas, because there's efficiency, because there's collaboration in a way that wasn't existing before, because it's so easy to travel or just do a Zoom or whatever it might be right. We just continually find ways to produce in a more effective manner.

Yeah, and skills are just so much more easy to learn now, like by yourself.

Well, my kids learn on YouTube, right, like my son just makes music in Ableton and he taught himself by YouTube, right, it's amazing Eight layers of a song that he's figured out the guy's channel there. So I mean, I'm not very handy, but because of technology I've become so much more handy. I could just look something up and figure it out where before reading an instructions was impossible, right? So there's so many examples of that.

Have you thought a lot about AI and how that's going to change the landscape of things and kind of we're seeing this more exponential increase in technology and how it relates to people earning money. It's a very interesting conversation. When you think about what work will look like, and even like 10 years from now, it's crazy.

I mean in my world. I look at it like what AI could bring is to remove all of the things that I don't even love doing, that require so much effort and labor that in my financial world like getting people's financial house in order there's a lot of details that I think that AI could start to really become more efficient, making sure that content is relevant and timely. Ai could really bring that. So what AI could do is allow me to get to a place where I could be really connected with the person I'm with. Like I don't have to spend time in all the busyness and details. We could talk about the things that really matter to them and get to the place of, like, what do you really want your life to look? Like, what's the most important to you? What holds you back? Like, get to those places of intimacy that people almost never get to because we're so frenetically trying to handle so much.

So I'm hoping AI will just remove all that, make it so much more efficient and, at the same time, like I have no idea what AI is gonna, what AI is gonna mean with the level of disruption and what that's gonna mean for people feeling relevant and having a job and what they do and what AI will be able to replace and not replace.

Like, I don't think humans have ever been very good at predicting those types of things. Right, like, humans thought that by this time we'd be just flying around in saucers, and when you think about all the cartoons and then back to the future, all that kind of stuff, that hasn't really happened. So in some ways we're really slow and other ways we're fast, but I think that there's gonna be it's like anything disruptions gonna make it positive in some ways and negative in others, and the people that are more holding on to wishing things wouldn't change will be in more pain than the people that adapt and grow and find ways that they can actually add value in new and meaningful ways, knowing that the things that were less exciting and not as efficient could be removed from their plate.

I think it's such a great point I mean, I'm already seeing it with the podcast Like I started this thing coming on like two years now, so probably like a year and eight months and from the time that I started to now, the amount of busy work I've been able to just pass off because of technology and because of AI, it's like it's made me be able to have so much of a more focus on just the conversation, just because of, yeah, we have editing tools and this and the other. It's like fine, I can focus on the thing, like the reason why I'm actually doing this thing. It's definitely the beauty of it and I love the possibility of like the part of being able to start like a big company with like three guys, just because you're able to leverage technology so well. It's like it's a very cool possibility. Don't know what the unintended consequences will be, but it's cool.

Yeah, I mean, we'll see it's gonna be a wild ride.

Absolutely. I know meditation is a big part of your journey. I only briefly heard you mention it and I think you have such a fascinating story. I would love to kind of hear a little bit about your own journey to what you're doing now and then how meditation kind of has fit into that picture.

Well, meditation is something that I learned like 20 years ago but struggled with, like. I remember the first time I tried to meditate I went in the basement of my house and didn't even make it 60 seconds. I heard something. I was like, oh you know, and it was like so easily distracted. I mean, this morning I meditated for I think it was like 35 minutes, so it wasn't like a really long meditation. Some mornings I go longer, like an hour and a half maybe it, you know. But then what it does is it helps me to get really clear about, like what's going on, like what my emotions are, what you know it's.

I have a process where I'm basically doing, you know, I'm meditating and I have these names that I chant essentially in the meditation and then when I get distracted because the mind gets busy, then I'm just giving, I'm just trying to let that pass by and give that up and then reset and hopefully I'll be able to get that back and reset and hopefully be more present over time.

I mean my wife meditates for two and a half hours a day. I mean it's pretty amazing. I think if they took scans of her brain 15 years ago and she started in today it would look different because of what happens in a brain that does that. She's a calmer person, she's more powerful in her ability to you know, not only listen, but give advice and handle situations that might have been overwhelming for her in the past, and it's even changed, like her overall energy and how she shows up, and so it's something that I like to start my day with. I'm not as consistent as I would like to be with it, but I, you know, the more consistent I am, the better my life tends to get.

That's such a fascinating point the more consistent you are with it, the better life tends to get. It's one of those hard things that I'll just stay consistent with, because it's not like abundantly clear off the bat like what you're getting out of it, like you don't get that same dopamine hit as you would from other things.

Yeah, I mean, you think about it as part of the goal is not getting anything. No-transcript, you know the void where there's a blank slate for potential creation, or just you know where in the world. It's noisy, there's always noise in the background, there's TVs, there's podcasts, there's you know, there's just always something happening, there's meetings. It's like I don't think people often get enough time to think for themselves, to think to themselves, to like, really ponder, because there's so much being told versus being discovered on our own. I, you know, I used to have a buddy come over and we work out every morning and we'd have coffee right after, and then when he moved away, I actually was like, oh, I don't have a lot of time myself, and so that became a big part of my morning routine and my meditation practice.

In the last couple of years I've had a lot more time on my own to really like. You know, like what do I want my life to look like? What's the what's the game with playing? How do I design that game? What things do I want to do more of? What things do I want to do less of? What emotions have I processed what? What thinking do I have that's sabotaging, or where do? I find myself in scarcity, Like just having time to think about those things, and I think that's really helped me design this life. I really enjoy that I never want to retire from is is having that time to myself.

I mean, it's an interesting part of like when you were in Italy and you did that, that stint there as well. It's like you took off some time and I'll let you explain it, but you took off some time from work and kind of just lived life and in doing that and then giving yourself the freedom to just be like, you're able to become more of a Renaissance man and get into X, y and Z and just like become this more like complete individual, like. I love those little. I think the way you described it is like mini retirement, like month here, month there. It's a cool way to do things and don't wait till you're 65 or too old.

like you know, take some time. Along the way it was hard for me to like take a summer when I owned a business and be like I'm going to go to Italy. It was hard to set that up, it took some time, but it was worth it. And then I'm there. It was awesome. But there were times I was bored. I mean, it's slower there, it's you know. But that boredom created that thinking that led to, like, what do I want to do? It's like I don't. Really I lost some of my hobbies. I'm like I'm on a play guitar again. I want to. Maybe I'm going to learn to shoot a bow, maybe a you know? Learn to fly fish, maybe, you know. And then I started drinking coffee while I was there. So it's like I got to learn how to make good coffee when I get back, you know. And so I went and took a class at intelligentsia. So I found that there was value in leisure and that when I started to have hobbies, I started to have time to like, think and download and experience things that were just for me, that if I didn't have that time, I would have never had those thoughts or those ideas. So it became a catalyst for brainstorming and for creation. And when I came back since I've come back from Italy, I've just done so much more writing. I've created so much more content because I came back with a fresh perspective and a lot of lessons and, you know, seeing what quality of life could look like and seeing what enjoying life along the way feels like and knowing what boredom feels like.

Boredom isn't the worst thing. Like you know, people are rarely bored. There's always something going on, someone's scrolling something. I mean it might be a little bit boring while they're doing it, but they're like again, how much time do we have with just time to think? I mean, I've never really had a you know on a podcast, talked about it at this level or said it this much.

But you know, I do think that in my book Money Unmasked, I talk about hobbies being this access and this gateway to remembering what we're here for, remembering who we are, remembering what we want. I say remembering because I think it's there, but it gets kind of like forgotten over time through, you know, circumstance and environment, through phases of life. You know, when we're kids we're playful or imaginative and then, as we get older, it's like, well, that's kid stuff, and then we lose a lot of that excitement. But that excitement can be a fuel for something, and I do think there's a distinction between hobby and career and hobby and earning money. And I, you know, maybe sometimes those may cross over, but I do think that if we can blur the lines between work and play, then we're not looking for this concept of retirement.

But again, if we go back to Jim Carrey's father, he worked at a time where retirement was a big deal, because think about, you know, in the 1950s, there are people still working in assembly lines and they're factory workers that now robots handle all that. So that's one way that we've already seen AI or technology improve our lives is that we're not doing as many dangerous things, not as many people are having to die in their work or work seven days a week doing the same thing. That's mundane, over and over. So we're in this like era right now where, if we go back 100 years, it would seem foolish to talk about purpose. It would seem crazy to talk about, you know, living a quality of life along the way.

It was like people are just trying to make it in most places, and there's still those places on earth today where there's plenty of poverty and there's plenty of like people struggling to get by. And there's plenty of people even where we're at right now struggling to get by, but there's an abundance of people that have an unprecedented opportunity to say how do you want your life to look, what do you want to do, how do you want to create value? You can invent it. There's technology. What used to be expensive is now free and you can use it as a platform to build upon. And if you could do that to help other people, you can get paid for that. What an amazing, amazing concept in time.

There's a quote from Naval that he says that all the best investors spend most of their time walking and reading. Is it for that exact reason of just like when you are bored, when you're walking, when you're reading, when you're taking that time in leisure? It allows you to just think deeper and think clearer.

Well, I'll use an example of I have this cabin and there's a river that's right on the cabin and there's a walk, there's a pathway, and when I there I moved towards a parasympathetic state. And parasympathetic state is where we kind of relax and rejuvenate and it's instrumental for healing and recovery. And so when I walk that trail especially like last week it was snowing and I was on snow she's walking it with two people from Miami and they were just blown away like because it looked like a winter wonderland, it looked magical, and they got to have this experience. It's so unique and different than what they would have every day. And then we got a lot done that day because it clears the mind, almost like when we have ginger to clear the palate or sorbet. It's the same like taking those walks often can clear the mind, and when we're in motion, I think that there's a way to absorb certain things and crowd out the noise. So I think it depends on the person, but you know, for me that was that was a big deal.

I'm fascinated by this concept of sacred cows that you talk about and these almost like fundamental beliefs that we hold as true and we rarely question them, when in reality there's a lot of those beliefs that aren't actually reality. What are some of those big sacred cow beliefs that we kind of hold to be true when in reality that might not be the case?

Yeah, like in money, it takes money to make money. That's stuff people say all the time. And yeah, you can make money on your money, but you make money with relationships and ideas, value and exchange. So it doesn't require money to make money. But people have that belief so they think, oh, I'm not wealthy enough for X, y and Z and they devalue their worth. Or high risk equals high return, risk means chance of losing. So how does increasing your chance of losing actually help you win? It doesn't. It just has us be in a level of ignorance and completely re kind of engaging in a cycle of destruction. Or you're in for the long haul Like that's another thing, that's another money concept that has this neglect cash flow neglects, accountability or measurement if something's working. So those are three of the myths in killing sacred cows. But the biggest myth is people believe in the finite pot. See, like there's only so much to go around zero sum game.

But that's not real because money can circulate and if we get money, then that money can be exchanged over and over. The more exchange is created, the more wealth is created. So that's that belief in the finite pie gets us to think that, well, I got to hold on to what I've got, I've got to take what I can. But money and pie are not the same thing, right? Even if there was a finite amount of money, they actually add it to computer screens or print it all the time. You know there's an infinite number of times it can exchange hands and we use it to buy computers and clothes and food and shelter or entertainment like comedy and concerts. So basically, the more times money exchanges hands, the more values created. It's only in this scarcity condition of the finite pie where people slow that velocity down, they slow that exchange down and they start to think very selfishly, which creates scarcity that will limit their wealth. And so this competitive nature ends up. Even if people are successful through competition, they're often miserable because they got to hustle, they got to outwork, they got to outpace, and it's just this kind of relentless treadmill of just trying to get ahead. And so that's unfortunately the pressure that people live under because they buy into this myth of scarcity and look, even if there's a finite resource, right, there's plenty of finite resources on earth. Other now they're trying to mine asteroids which might bring even more resources right, but there's an infinite number of ways that we can do new things. There's new ways for energy. You know there's. You know it used to be that people were riding around on horses, then cars were embedded and they were on gasoline. Now we've got batteries and their solar power. So, like there's ways to use human ingenuity and innovation. And we look at everything from, you know, plants, animals, humans, like they keep populating. Right, there's seeds and then more plants grow and there's animals and they reproduce. And so, even if we're looking at the economic definition of scarcity, there's a finite amount of resources. There are certain resources that are replenished and there are other resources that we could just do something different to get the same result.

And there was there's, like an economist, thomas Malthias, from long ago, who had predicted we'd just run out of food and that the world's population this was like 400 years ago that we would be it would be done by now, and yet we've had exponential growth in population and somehow we're still alive, somehow we're still here, doesn't mean that there's not major problems and things that need to be addressed right With everything from pollution or or some people that you know. We've got a lot of the population that are hungry, but the amount of people hungry today, versus 100 years ago, is drastically reduced drastically reduced with a higher population. So that is evidence that innovation and ingenuity and value creation and what I'm talking about actually works, although there's plenty of people that, would, you know, disagree because of other examples. But yes, there are still plenty of people that are hungry, but it's like 400%. I get it what it used to be like 59% of the population. Now it's like 17% of the population. That's crazy.

I love that concept because it reminds me of like someone should look up real stats on that.

I'm I'm guessing that's a pulling out of my ass.

But I love that concept because you know, I think about useful versus true and like. Even if there was this scarcity, limited number of things, it's not as useful to take that mindset as it would be to take the abundance mindset. Almost always that abundance mindset is going to Allow you to start the business. Take the risk, do the thing Because you're working from a place of it can work versus it probably won't work. Just that change of belief is just so instrumental and like actually doing anything. Yeah, yeah, so I was. So one thing I wanted to ask you about is right now a lot of my friends are getting out of college and or either getting a nine-to-five or they really don't want to get a nine-to-five, but they don't Know the business to start. They don't know the thing to do for themselves, to not to go into that mindless path of a A nine-to-five where they are just working for a fortune 500 company, blah, blah, blah. They do that for so they're 65 and then retire, but they don't know the path to take to get away from that.

Yeah, I Mean this is gonna take daily Carving out time to really focus on what they want, you know, to explore and research and like it's worth taking the time To like map out and write down what do you want, what are you looking for, what do you want to create not just waiting for it to come to them, but really taking that time. It goes back to the very first thing we talked about, which is writing. I mean, we had this old little cabin and we went and stayed there and and at the end of the trip I was like I feel like I was just on a bender, I feel like we like hung over because it's just small. There's a lot of people there, you know, it's just not enough space. So we just wrote down exactly what we were looking for on the drive home and Then talked to you know realtors about this, what we're looking for. We eventually found it.

But, we knew what we were looking for. If you don't know what you're looking for, how are you gonna find it? If you don't take time to ask what you want and and explore and say this is what I don't want, this is what I do want, and If we just hope that it's gonna happen, that's very Fortunate few that might get that. So what are the things that you want to do? I mean, you're spending all this time in the classroom. What about the time out of the classroom to design your life? So that's, that's the key. And if you go to Garrett Gunderson comm for slash rich life, I have a sole purpose activator guide you get out for free and I would start looking through that to start Finding what it is that you want. Go through that guide. Answer the questions, because the right questions, if they're asked, will bring the answers from within. But a lot of times we're not asking the right questions or nobody's asking us the questions. So we feel deflated and defeated.

It Reminds me of the link to money and happiness that I know you talk about sometimes. Is there's like that correlation up to a certain point? It's like I don't know you could correct me on this like seventy thousand dollars or something like that, we're money 75 probably changed, but that yeah, study was originally that.

So with that to, once you get over that hump and you start to get to a point where you're disconnected from the money and the happiness, it's that exact thing, right, that's going to get you. So that plays a satisfaction in your experience.

Enjoyment, like you know, meaning those, those things, those are gonna be critical because money Can't solve all those things by itself. It's very helpful to make you a bit happier, but to sustain happiness, never really designed to do that. And I know, I just know so many people that have made a lot of money and at the same time Thought they'd be happier when they got there than they were and and so you can have a lot of money and be happy. You can have a little money and be happy. And you can have a lot of money and be miserable. And you can have a little money and be even more miserable. It's a little bit easier to be miserable when you're broke, right, that's for sure. So it's. But at the same time, once the basics are handled, there's just not a direct correlation. So where's the direct quote correlation?

It's in what do you want to do with your life, what things Excite you, what things do you enjoy, like, what? Like having the, the time for some play and enjoyment and fun and Also finding work that you're like, hey, most what I'm doing I enjoy. And I say most because I don't know that anyone just gets to Do everything they want all the time. You know, even if you build an amazing empire, you still might have to do with some employee issues or you might have to hire Fire and you might not enjoy doing those things. You might have to be in a meeting that's not always fun.

But what the reality is, are you doing more of what you want and less of what you don't? Over time, I know you continue to move that needle in a way that designs the life that you want to live. What do you want your days to look like? What do you want your weeks to look like? How many trips do you want to take, but you want to be spending your time with? What types of things do you want to do? These are the questions that nobody else can answer, and unfortunately, a lot of people answer those questions with what they don't want instead of what they Do want so they're consistent about I don't want to be a debt, I don't want to be in school anymore, I don't want it like well, that isn't, that's not the plan path.

fine, that's good for like pre-crit, like just the beginning, but like what do you want? And if you can't solve that, no one else can solve it for you. That's the key. That's the key to freedom, is a key to fulfillment.

It's so funny I didn't realize how much of this conversation will go back to just ironing out what you want out of life and just spending time with yourself and thinking about, thinking, about thinking yeah, I mean, I didn't know that we would talk about that today either, but that's a big part of it.

Yeah, I just don't. What if someone knew better for the life that you, that you want to live, than you did and they took to tell you exactly what to do? I still want to discover, explore, have some adventure, like that's kind of the premise of communism.

Oh, we know better for you than you know and we're gonna tell you what to do and you're gonna, you know, be safe because of it. But people aren't Safe and happy. They're forced to do things they don't want to do in order to create that safety, and they find out that feels a lot like enslavement and bondage, not Excitement and fulfillment, and so we, so many people, are in a world where they get to choose what they want to do now. It might disappoint their parents, it might not be the path that someone else sees for them, and then, if we have the courage to pursue our own path, we also get the reward of Defining that path and having the courage to take that leap of faith on what we really want. Maybe it's not the most profitable, maybe it's not the most secure who knows?

Yeah, and what are you? What are you hoping people get out of the kids book that you just wrote?

Yeah, so the you know it's kind of the message we just talked about, that if you have a certain amount of money it can make you happier for the basics but no matter how hard money tries, it can't make you happy and ultimately the best investment is in yourself and that you know and get them to think about developing skill sets and Not be intimidated by money and see money is something that they can understand from an early age as a concept. Therefore, it's something that they can master later on in life because they didn't have a bunch of misinformation. So from them being their best asset to investing in themselves, to earning, saving, spending and giving and getting to a place of Abundance so they get past survival and into prosperity. That's the message of the book and what I know about kids books is people read them cover to cover my other books not everybody reads cover to cover right, and they might read them more than once and Simple can be very profound and elegant, can be the difference between Something actually being implemented in someone's life or something that just stays on the page of a book. So this uses entertainment to educate.

I think parents reading it to kids are gonna get a lot of value out of it and you know I like it because when people around me and they see it, they get to take a few minutes and read it and get it, so it Doesn't it doesn't mean that you have to sit down and add it to the list. You know, hopefully you can find time for it. It's just, it's right there and my, my co-author speaks kids, so she made it super fun and the illustrator is phenomenal. So it's it's. I'm really proud of this book.

It's incredible. I mean I love what you said about the simplicity being Often time so profound. It's like I think about what things or what books have had the biggest impact on me, and one in particular was like a Jack-o-willing book Jack-o-willing kids book that I just Saw on YouTube one time, like the audio version of it, clicked on it and listen to it and just that profound message and like the Simplicity, simplicity of it. It's like it sticks with you and and there's definitely Such a beauty in the simplicity. Yeah, so what? What's something we haven't talked about today that you think is fundamental? I know there's so many layers of you and your work that we haven't got to yet. What's? What's something that we haven't talked about today that you think is is a key thing to harp on.

I mean, I think we're all carrying around some form of pain and you know we all make mistakes. For some people mistakes they think to find them, but I don't think they make you less lovable, they just make you human and the key is learn from your mistakes versus repeat them. Most people that make the same mistake twice, they make it like 17, 18 times. Each time it gets a little bit more painful, stakes a little bit higher. Like there was a book called loving logic I use with my kids. My wife turned me on to it and it was like give these kids options and choices and let them make mistakes. Well, they're small before there's two and so, like you know, rather than guarding them and helicopter parenting them.

So, you know, get out there and, you know, make some, some mistakes. That sounds like, sounds like Vegas is tagline get out there, make some mistakes. I'm not talking about those kind of mistakes, but just like, bet on yourself. You know, bet on yourself and and and learn, because if you grow yourself, you'll grow the value that you create. If you grow the value you create, you'll actually have more security over time. It just takes not handing everything over to everyone else and hoping for the best, but like diving in yourself and Navigating your way through it.

Shout out crypto for teaching me that that lesson that's a that's an interesting Topic. I'm curious your thoughts on that. Have you? Have you looked into crypto like what is? Was your two cents in that world, because there is so Many different opinions and wildness.

I just like Bitcoin. I like the concept of a deflationary, you know, and store value a finite amount. You know how it works with the ledger and and and verifying transactions. It's such a pain using, you know, banks right now. We've been wiring money's become more cumbersome over time and you know, we don't know what's gonna happen with quantitative easing or quantitative tightening and federal, you know, reserve changing interest rates. Like to me, it's gonna be a wild ride with Bitcoin, but it's something that I believe and I think it was a gift to humanity.

Aetherium is another thing I have quite a bit of. You know. I'm just pretty much in the two big ones. I'm not a shit-coined guy Like I don't.

I don't go by a bunch of like I hope this goes from, you know, one cent to two cent. I'm gonna double my money, like you know, and there's a lot of stories in crypto of like, oh, that's what this coin does, but a lot of it early on was just a way for people to Pump and dump and kind of extract money for people. But that doesn't mean that the entire, you know, blockchain and ecoverse isn't valid. I think it is valid. It's just what's gonna make it there. Aside, if we go back and we were to rewind to the late 90s you know who there were so many Dot-com companies coming out, technology companies. Most of them didn't make it, but the ones that did make it, the ones that did, are instrumental. Our lives today and that's what I see is crypto, is something that you know. Those, those two coins, are, you know I have another coin, but those are the. I only have three coins, but I'm in those at a decent amount.

I, you know I have a belief in them and what do you think the role is gonna be in them? Like, what do you think the application or the use case for them is going to be in the future?

I always see like humanitarian efforts with with Bitcoin right drop in thumb drives on oppressed people so they now have a Way to get money because everything you know, in their government they shut in North Korea. They could shut down the bank accounts. So there's no way to get like, there's just, there's already. Like you can. You can you know you can basically take money with you in a thumb drive or a wallet you can transact quickly. You can you know like it's just it's not controlled by some centralized Organization like central banks or some government, and and that they can change your outcomes with a whim. Now it doesn't mean that regulation can't make a major impact, but to me it just it's. It just took a minute to make sense, but one of once it made sense. It made sense, you know. I get that like there was a big, there's been big crazes with NFTs and then they kind of, you know, filter out. But a lot of it's because the early days create a ton of speculation and then it shakes out and then it comes back in a new form or in a stronger form where people now have to have a Better understanding of what they're getting into and why they're getting into it. It's just the nature of investing. Any new investment that comes out and starts growing, people start throwing money at it, whether they know it's valid or not. So it's one of these things that don't speculate like.

I'm all about getting economically independent first, getting cash flow from assets to cover your basic expenses, but I like to store some cash above that in Ethereum and in. You know Bitcoin, so I there's a lot of people that could speak about it with more knowledge and you know Intonacity and and everything that I I do, but I know enough that I've done. I've done well with Bitcoin. I've done. You know I Sold really early the first time around the second, the next time, I haven't, so I bought a little bit higher. It's like a lot higher, but it's done well since then. And you know I'm not trying to sell it, I'm trying to hold on to it as a store of value.

How are you thinking about the allocation of your wealth in general, not just in Crypto currency, like if you were to look at it like a pie? How do you, how do you think about what's you allocate your money in?

Yeah, five categories. For me, the big three are intellectual property. I'm creating, you know, I'm creating content all the time. I'm writing a blog like it's 2006. I've got 10 books out there. I'm revamping how I look at courses because I don't think people watch courses. So I'm saying how do I get people to actually engage with the content? And I'm just giving more and more away for free, you know, just to, instead of charging for that kind of stuff and then just charging for my time at this point, not as much my content other than books. So intellectual property is one of the big ones and I can license that to other financial people. I can use it to create value for for people that I work with.

The second one is real estate. They're only real estate that I can go to and touch. I'm not. I used to own a lot of real estate. I don't know a lot. Now I own a cabin that I do my one-on-one immersions at, and in a second place I could put a music studio in, and I own my house.

I don't. I used to own a lot of real estate but it was a huge pain in the ass. I didn't love it. So I want places that you know, give me a little bit of inflation protection I can utilize and if I would have to pay the money somewhere else, but now I'm gonna be the one to use it. That saves me that money, or at least it's a wash.

And then the third category is businesses. Like so, I have a couple businesses, and so intellectual property, real estate and business. Now the other two categories, as I save my money into overfunded cash value insurance, specifically whole life, not in next universal life, because I'm just want stable cash that I get access to, get some tax benefit. It's not it gonna be a home run, but it's gonna be a place I know I can count on when I need it. And then a little bit of crypto. So those are the five categories that I really have.

I try to keep it simple and not over extend. Myself, I had over a hundred real estate properties at one time. I didn't want to manage that, didn't want to deal with it, so I decided that that wasn't my gig. I believe everybody has an investor DNA. What's your investor DNA? Where do you invest based upon your knowledge and expertise, based upon your values and what drives you, and you focus on those things and you eliminate the rest and Then you know, focus on cash flow, focus on improving your quality of life over time Like we talked about with Italy and those kind of things and and find time to yourself so you can think about what you truly want true, and those one-on-one immersions.

What is that?

So people fly in. In an afternoon we go up to my cabin. It's kind of like a lodge. It's a nice, beautiful place, and the first day we just kind of hang out. I get to know who they are, what they really want in life, what's working for them, what's not working. It's pretty casual. But the second day roll up the sleeves and we go from A to Z.

How do they want to design their richest life? That's the question. What do they need to get their financial house in order so that supports that? What do they need to heal with their belief systems around money that sabotages them? What are the things they want to do less of and do more of? What's the life design that they want? What are the bucket list things they will that we can have do in the next year versus 10 years from now? And then, what are the five objectives are going to inform the actions that they take moving forward. We help them kind of find their flow, remove things from their calendar that don't make sense for who they are, develop a story that's consistent with their most powerful version of themselves, and it's all a lot of fun. We usually save a bunch of tax by the end of it, we get really clear about you know what, what they're going to improve in their life before the end, and I make the connections that help make all of it a reality.

So it's not just information amazing, kind of like a holistic money experience, both hitting that mental of what you want to want, but also making sure you're getting on the financial side of things and making sure everything's organized. That's a beautiful way to do things. Got it Awesome. Well, garrett dude, thank you so much for today. This was a wonderful conversation. I think, I need to spend more time with myself and do do some more journaling, but I so appreciate you and I appreciate you taking time for for doing this to it.

Yeah, thanks for having me, I'm in, thank you. Thank you, sir.